Women defamed

On the street, everybody stares at Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco. Elsewhere, she would be just another career woman, with her matching faux-Burberry handbag and neckerchief. Not in Belgrade. Here some of the passers-by stare at the lawyer with pure hatred.

This is the only part of the city where she dares stroll outside. She has been publicly vilified as “old and ugly” and “a whore” because the organisation she founded in November 1997, Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (Yucom), challenges the prevailing nationalism in post-conflict Serbia. She has spent recent weeks in court being sued by one of Milosevic’s former ministers, who once wrote of her: “What a vampire! I don’t have time to deal with louses and an old woman who lost her period when Tito died.”

Aleksandar Tijanic, 60, is a misogynist whose career as a journalist is distinguished by his sycophancy to Slobodan Milosevic’s formidable wife, Mira. After the people’s revolution, Tijanic became the media adviser to Vojislav Kostunica, ousted as Serbia’s prime minister in last May’s election. Tijanic became director general of the state-run RTS (Radio Television of Serbia), (...)